this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2024
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Would you use Edge as your default browser on Windows 11 if Microsoft nags you with a 3D banner? Microsoft thinks you would. In a new experiment, which appears to be rolling out to Edge stable on Windows 11, Microsoft has turned on a banner that uses 3D graphics to promote the browser.

First spotted by Windows Latest, Microsoft has been testing the new 3D banner for a while now, but it’s now rolling out to more people. If Edge is not your default browser and you open it directly or through files like PDFs, a new banner will remind you to change your default browser settings.

The banner explains that using Edge as your default browser can help protect you from phishing and malware attacks. It asks you to confirm this change by clicking “Set default,” and then you need to confirm again in the Windows settings app.

The pop-up screen will appear after you install the new Windows updates. If you skip the banner, you’ll get another reminder to use Edge when you open the browser.

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[–] [email protected] 82 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Time for another anti-trust lawsuit.

[–] brbposting 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

This FTC has the balls for it, too.

Amazon. Apple. Who’s next?

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 2 months ago (2 children)

In our tests, Windows Latest spotted that Microsoft plans to use ChatGPT to generate website suggestions, which will appear below the search bar.

So needlessly wasting resources to provide something that already exists but you can market as AI?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (2 children)

How many ai "improvements" do you think are based on ideas generated by ai at this point?

The answer is definitely not zero. Which is pretty fuckin weird, the more I think about it.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

if they use an LLM to make the suggestions then it’s possible it ends up suggesting websites that don’t even exist. or it could accidentally suggest a malware website, or make a typo, etc.

this could be dangerous if they aren’t very careful

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Remember the people who created malicious libraries that ChatGPT made up and suggested, in the hopes someone would blindly install them? You can do this a lot easier here. Check what websites this tends to hallucinate when typing "google" "youtube" "facebook" etc. and if any of them don't exist yet, register that address and host a phishing version of the corresponding site there.

[–] [email protected] 58 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Obligatory people getting mad at you for people suggesting you stop using software that is openly hostile toward you response.

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[–] [email protected] 55 points 2 months ago (4 children)

The only thing that could get me to switch back to windows would be an animatronic Clippy with LLM hallucinations dialed up to 11.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

"Hey, I see that it looks like you're having fun and fun and relaxing in a few days so I don't have a chance to get the remainder of the time in the past"

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

Dialed up to Windows 11!

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 2 months ago (9 children)

When did desktop operating systems become a place for live A/B tests of ads?

This is something I expect from a malicious website like Facebook, not the fucking operating system.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 months ago

Capitalism be like.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Since you asked, and I commented on Lemmy about this before.

Back in the Windows XP and even Windows 7 days Microsoft was trying to sell computers to people. It had to convince people why computers are worth their time.

Fast forward to Windows 10 and now it's, "ok we now got an audience that's addicted to our operating system, lets see what we can get away with. We might lose like 1% to Linux and like 5% to mac doing some of these while most of everyone won't switch at all. and we increase our profits."

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

We got click-baited into reading about Microsoft doing shady shit with their browser default settings (again, no less!), but that part wasn’t even mentioned in the article.

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Only [ Confirm ] and [ Set later ] in the dialog? No way to never set/change/cancel? Rapist mentality?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (2 children)

corporations are people when it comes to "free speech" (read: political bribes) but they aren't when it comes to accountability. this is what happens when you don't treat corporations like people and fucking jail them for shit like this.

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[–] fin 9 points 2 months ago

also, [use Linux instead]

[–] [email protected] 44 points 2 months ago (19 children)

Switching to Linux is better.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (3 children)

How about using M$ Edge on Linux? /s

Seriously though, one of my friends uses Edge on Windows, Linux, and Android. I still couldn't wrap my head around his decision.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 months ago (7 children)

I remember when someone posted a joke Slashdot with a fake screenshot of Windows advising a user to switch away from Firefox and back to IE.

Everyone lost their minds on what was an obvious joke. An unthinkable thing for Microsoft to do.

Yet here we are...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Corporations are so large now they can do outrageous things like this and they will still have millions or billions of users who don't care. Plus they have learned that bad press is free advertising.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 months ago (2 children)

And MS wonders why more users are moving to W10...

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I moved from Windows 10 to Fedora/Debian recently. Dual-booting them until I figure out which one I want to use. I've used Debian on servers for 20+ years, but Fedora seems like a great distro too. I switched to Fedora at work too, and I'm enjoying it. At work, I can choose between a MacBook with MacOS, or a Lenovo ThinkStation or X1 Carbon / P1 with Windows or Fedora.

The only Windows-specific app I really cared about was Visual Studio, but Jetbrains Rider is looking like a good replacement. I don't really do any PC gaming any more.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Both Fedora and Debian are excellent choices.

I keep feeling compelled to suggest people try the atomic versions of Fedora. They do upgrades in a way that cannot get stuck halfway, and if the upgrade breaks something you can roll back. I think it's neat.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

They pushed me to Linux (Arch btw).

They aren't targeting people like me though. They are targeting people like my wife that doesn't read what she clicks and just accepts it.

Microsoft are being really very pushy to get people to use Edge.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 months ago

What is 3D about the banner? The mouse cursor graphic?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It reaches through your monitor and slaps you.

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[–] wispydust 20 points 2 months ago

I get that Edge may not be the preferred browser of many, but calling this a "3D banner" seems a bit sensational at best. It's just clipart of an arrow.

[–] andrew_bidlaw 15 points 2 months ago

I have a dream of that time when small MS's changes won't get media coverage because even ~tech~ journos will not use the latest Windows release anymore.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

Microsoft could care less about your PCs resources when you're idk, playing some 4k or even 8k video games. What a joke, but for real, if any of you use WIndows at home and don't want to jump straight to Linux. You can (temporally jump over to Chromebooks, which will mostly work out of the box, and has support for Linux apps.

Chromebook's I would argue are perfect for getting users use to Linux apps without having to worry about losing any familiarity they might have with Something like WIndows or Mac.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

no. no. no. a ~~thousand~~ million times, NO!!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (7 children)

and you open it directly or through files like PDFs

As a Mac user, for whom PDFs open in Preview - because they’re effectively an image format - I find it wild that, to this day, Windows defaults to opening them in a browser. Windows has an image viewer right there.

I have Win11 in a VM so I can make certain company documents play nice for the Windows users at work, and find it genuinely entertaining how fucky MS have made it. I found the other day that if you link to a document in Excel, but put the link in wrong, it’ll open Edge to warn you about it. Until that point I hadn’t opened Edge at all in that VM. I installed Firefox from an .exe I downloaded in macOS then immediately set it as default.

It’s always nice to shut that VM down and go back to using an OS that doesn’t nag me all the fucking time.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

PDFs are... Not an image format? It's a document format that is difficult to edit, and thus mostly meant to be read-only, but a document nonetheless.

An image viewer can't open a pdf, unless for some ungodly reason it also has a whole pdf reader built into it, which just sounds inane. Defaulting to a browser is icky, and I think stems from browsers having gotten good PDF support before Microsoft could figure it out. This is something that ideally belongs to a reader, either dedicated to PDF, or supporting similar formats, be it documents or ebooks.

That's like saying that a 3D project file is basically an image format, if it's built to be rendered out from a viewpoint into an image.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I find it wild that, to this day, Windows defaults to opening them in a browser. Windows has an image viewer right there.

Can that image viewer extract text so that a user could easily copy/paste it? I think if whatever pdf I was opening didn't allow me to do that I would be really frustrated.

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